In the final episode of Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai’s long-running educational YouTube series, the game designer revealed that he has been working on a secret new project for over three years—one that he has never discussed until now.
As Sakurai explains in the Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games finale, he was working on the final DLC characters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in July 2021 when he “received a request to write a game proposal, which [he] finished at lightning speed.”
“I’m sorry I can’t share more about this project, but assuming we’re able to get it made, it should be announced sooner or later,” Sakurai added.
A few months after he finished writing the proposal, his work commitments wrapped up once he finished work on Sora from Kingdom Hearts, the final character added to the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster. At that point, he’d been given the go-ahead to start production on the new game, but he knew “it was going to take some time to assemble the right team.”
He aimed to have that team assembled by April 2022, but in the meantime, he finally had some time off work after jumping immediately from one project to the next for most of his career. That’s when he decided to take the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to make a YouTube channel instead of going on vacation or preparing to direct another game.
While Sakurai isn’t ready to talk about a new game yet, we can make an educated guess. Since 2008, Sakurai has directed four games: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/Nintendo 3DS, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. That’s a new Super Smash Bros. for every console Nintendo has released in the past 15 years. With the Switch 2 seemingly right around the corner, we’d be shocked if Nintendo didn’t try to recruit Sakurai to work his magic again. But maybe he’ll surprise us with something entirely new.
You can watch the entire Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games finale below:
